The Breeze of Dusk with the Scent of Musk

Chapter 4: The Two Tailors

In the Star Kingdom in the Silk Province in the Rainbow City lived two dear female friends: Liling Heng and Mei Shun. Currently, both of them are 18 years old. These two friends knew one another since childhood and they have strong family relationships as the parents of Liling are close friends to the parents of Mei.

Both Liling and Mei are tailors and it was Liling's mother, Hua Bohai, who taught them the tailoring profession so that they can run their own business and achieve their financial independence early in life. Hua Bohai used to run a tailor shop named the Lily Tailor Shop but she then handed over the shop to her daughter, Liling, and her friend, Mei, and she became content with the supervision of the ongoing work of the shop.

Currently, the Lily Tailor Shop has three rooms: the display room, the fitting room and the tailoring room. The display room is where clothes are displayed for sale so that customers can see and examine them. The fitting room is a private room that allows a customer to change clothes and try one of the displayed clothes to make sure it ideally matches his/her size. The tailoring room is where Liling and Mei tailor clothes using different available tools of that time. There are two modes for tailoring clothes at this shop: on-demand tailoring and in-advance tailoring. On-demand tailoring is when a customer requests a piece of clothes that matches certain specifications of size, color, cloth type, etc. In-advance tailoring is when Liling or Mei tailors clothes without the request of customers to show them for sale in the display room. A customer who likes a piece of clothes from the display room can try it in the fitting room and if he/she likes it, he/she can buy it directly. For on-demand tailoring, Liling and Mei charge 50% of the demanded cloth price upfront. For example, if the price of the cloth is 50 golden taels, Liling must receive 25 golden taels from the customer before she starts tailoring that piece. Liling and Mei tailor all kinds of clothes starting from socks and underwear and ending with stylish outer garments for both male and female customers. They have a great reputation in the Rainbow City and they are busy most of the time.

One day, Liling invited Mei to her house to have dinner and her mother prepared for them Seafood Soup, Shanghai Noodles, Beef with Mushrooms and Ginger Chicken. The two friends had marvelous joyous time and they talked about different topics. Here is a snapshot of part of their conversation:

Mei: We have not found our future husbands yet. Circumstances are moving against our wishes.

Liling: Yes, I am faced with the difficult equation of marriage: I do not want those who want me and those whom I want do not want me.

Mei: Yes, I can relate to you in this. I am also faced with this painful equation of marriage.

Liling: I dream of a noble husband who loves me deeply and treats me with the best manners. He must be brave, generous, handsome and self-reliant.

Mei: Yes. I am similar to you in my wishes and I want my husband to be loving, caring and considerate. We are going to spend our entire lives with our husbands and they must be carefully chosen.

Liling: I wish we can tailor our husbands as we tailor clothes with precise specifications and attributes.

Mei: [Laugh] It is nearly impossible to find a husband who meets all your expectations. It is the nature of human beings that they are perfect in certain aspects and imperfect in other aspects. Finding absolute perfection in a human being is nearly impossible and we have to cope with this simple rule of life.

Liling: You are right. We have to accept life with its trade-offs and we should not expect to find the best thing in everything. At times we have to lower our sights if we want our life to keep moving forward.

Liling: Let us play a game together. Recently I learned about a game named: Distinguish Truth from Falsehood.

Mei: Nice. What are the rules of this game?